the right of men to be free, maintained that negroes were men, and offered himself as a proof of his assertion,—­an argument that few had the temerity to deny.  If it were answered that he was only half a negro, he would reply that slavery made no such distinction, and as a still more irrefutable argument would point to his friend, Samuel R. Ward, who often accompanied him on the platform,—­an eloquent and effective orator, of whom Wendell Phillips said that “he was so black that, if he would shut his eyes, one could not see him.”  It was difficult for an auditor to avoid assent to such arguments, presented with all the force and fire of genius, relieved by a ready wit, a contagious humor, and a tear-compelling power rarely excelled.

“As a speaker,” says one of his contemporaries, “he has few equals.  It is not declamation, but oratory, power of description.  He watches the tide of discussion, and dashes into it at once with all the tact of the forum or the bar.  He has art, argument, sarcasm, pathos,—­all that first-rate men show in their master efforts.”

His readiness was admirably illustrated in the running debate with Captain Rynders, a ward politician and gambler of New York, who led a gang of roughs with the intention of breaking up the meeting of the American Anti-slavery Society in New York City, May 7, 1850.  The newspapers had announced the proposed meeting in language calculated to excite riot.  Rynders packed the meeting with rowdies, and himself occupied a seat on the platform.  Some remark by Mr. Garrison, the first speaker, provoked a demonstration of hostility.  When this was finally quelled by a promise to permit one of the Rynders party to reply, Mr. Garrison finished his speech.  He was followed by a prosy individual, who branded the negro as brother to the monkey.  Douglass, perceiving that the speaker was wearying even his own friends, intervened at an opportune moment, captured the audience by a timely display of wit, and then improved the occasion by a long and effective speech.  When Douglass offered himself as a refutation of the last speaker’s argument, Rynders replied that Douglass was half white.  Douglass thereupon greeted Rynders as his half-brother, and made this expression the catchword of his speech.  When Rynders interrupted from time to time, he was silenced with a laugh.  He appears to have been a somewhat philosophic scoundrel, with an appreciation of humor that permitted the meeting to proceed to an orderly close.  Douglass’s speech was the feature of the evening.  “That gifted man,” said Garrison, in whose Life and Times a graphic description of this famous meeting is given, “effectually put to shame his assailants by his wit and eloquence.”

A speech delivered by Douglass at Concord, New Hampshire, is thus described by another writer:  “He gradually let out the outraged humanity that was laboring in him, in indignant and terrible speech....  There was great oratory in his speech, but more of dignity and earnestness than what we call eloquence.  He was an insurgent slave, taking hold on the rights of speech, and charging on his tyrants the bondage of his race.”